When potential customers in your geographic area are searching for services that you offer, are you showing up in their search results? If not, you could be missing out on tons of interested, paying customers. Improving your local ranking on Google is important in order to be sure you’re capturing all available business opportunities.
What Is Your Local Ranking?
The term “local ranking” refers to where your business ranks on a local search level based upon your location. If you’re located in or around the Orlando, Florida area and you search for a general term on Google such as “Chinese restaurant” you will receive results that are close to your location, even though you didn’t type in “Chinese restaurant in Orlando, Florida”. If you’re unhappy with where your business shows up when doing these types of general searches, there are ways to improve your local ranking on Google.
How To Improve Your Local Ranking On Google
If you’re looking to improve your local ranking on Google, you should check out Google My Business and read their recommendations. There are essentially five main details to pay close attention to when it comes to improving your local ranking.
- Make Sure All Information Is Complete: Google is always trying to provide their users with the best and most accurate information, so naturally businesses that have complete and accurate information are going to show up higher and more often in search results
- Verify Your Location: Verifying your location on Google is really just making sure that your correct address and geographical location are shown on your business listing, if you’re unsure how to do this you can learn here
- Ensure Accurate Hours: Making sure your business hours are correct allows customers to know when they can access your business and also helps to keep your reviews in good standing because you won’t have angry customers that took the time to drive to your business only to find out you’re closed
- Manage and Respond to Reviews: When businesses interact with their customers and respond to both positive and negative reviews, it shows how much they truly care about their customers and their experience and opinion of their business
- Add Photos To Your Listing: Adding photos to your business listing can help to entice potential customers to come into your business, and also give you the ability to show off your goods or services with appealing photos
How Does Google Determine Local Ranking?
Relevance, distance, and prominence are the three main components that Google looks at to determine your business’s local ranking. Relevance refers to how well the information on your listing matches the information that a user is searching for. Distance simply refers to the distance that a user is from the business address, and Google will always show the closest businesses to that user first. Prominence refers to how well-known certain businesses may be. Google tries to be as useful as possible to those searching, and showing them prominent businesses that are highly visited in certain locations shows users places they might like to visit.
If you’re interested in improving your local search ranking, SEO Smooth’s knowledgable and experienced team knows exactly how to get your business ranking higher. Contact us today to get started!
